Grow Dat Youth Farm

Small Center worked with Grow Dat Youth Farm to incubate a program, and design and build a sustainable 4-acre campus over a few years of hard and fun work. Grow Dat provides job and leadership opportunities to New Orleans youth while also growing and sharing fresh local fruits and vegetables.

Project Dates

January 2009–December 2011

Context

New Orleanians, like many Americans, face an interconnected series of negative health trends related to fresh food access, lifestyle habits, and education. Parallel to food access and affordability issues, the youth of New Orleans lack job opportunities and the income and skills that come with first-time jobs. Furthermore, the few jobs available to New Orleans high school aged students are in the fast food service industry which compounds nutritional issues, and shift times often compromise students’ academic growth. Grow Dat Youth Farm was founded by a former New Orleans high school teacher who was looking to address these dual needs of youth job and leadership opportunities paired with fresh food access and education.

Small Center Engagement

Small Center was the incubator and fiscal home for founder Johanna Gilligan’s program vision. As she formed and fundraised for the program, using Hollygrove Market and Farm as a pilot year growing site, the Small Center team began designing the Youth Farm’s permanent home in New Orleans City Park.

In 2011, two spring semester studios designed a 6,000 square foot urban farming campus and a four-acre farm site plan for organic farming and sophisticated water and soil management. With approvals from the Grow Dat staff, City Park, and State Fire Marshall construction of the campus began. Students from the Tulane School of Architecture built the facility from foundation to finished space in a two semester sequence. Subcontractors were hired for more complex crane operating and electrical work.

In line with Grow Dat’s organizational goals of sustainability, responsibility, and integrity, the campus’ seven repurposed shipping container structures form the structural base for all floors and roofs and spaces on site allowing foundations that do not disturb old growth oak and cypress trees.

All rainfall is sequestered on site, all gray-water is bio-filtered on site, all black-water is composted on site, and the farm/classroom was built largely with recycled and repurposed materials. Additionally, Grow Dat uses a former golf course fairway, rethinking the target users, use, and potential impacts of this shared public park space.

Partner Organization

The mission of Grow Dat is to nurture a diverse group of young leaders through the meaningful work of growing food. On the farm, youth work collaboratively to produce healthy food for local residents and to inspire personal, social, and environmental change in their own communities. Grow Dat Youth Farm is a place where people from different backgrounds and disciplines come together in research and practice to support public health, local economies, and a sustainable food system in South Louisiana.

Outcome

Since the construction of its City Park facilities, Grow Dat has grown from mentoring 11 students per year to 50 students in 2015. In its first five years, 2010-2015, Grow Dat has grown over 36,000 pounds of food with over 150 young adults. The organization donates 30% of the harvest to a shared harvest while the other 70% is sold at markets and to local restaurants to support the program. Additionally, Grow Dat tracks the personal and academic growth of their students, which can be found in their annual reports.

Collaborators